Biovotion at White House meeting

October 15, 2014

Biovotion at White House meeting

2014/10/15

White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and USAID, invited selected clinicians, designers, biometric experts, makers or material scientists to attend an all-day workshop in Washington, DC to brainstorm and rapid-prototype solutions to improving the safety of healthcare workers treating Ebola patients in West Africa.

Earlier in October, President Obama announced a new Grand Challenge for Development to generate the best solutions to help health care workers provide better care in the midst of the Ebola epidemic: “This gear can get incredibly hot, especially in humid environments. So today, we’re issuing a challenge to inventors and entrepreneurs and businesses of the world to design better protective solutions for our health workers…. our goal is to get them to the field in a matter of months to help the people working in West Africa right now”.

Biovotion was invited to this closed workshop to contribute its expertise in wearable physiological monitoring under challenging conditions such as under heavy personal protective gear.
The VSM platform was demonstrated and discussed to develop scenarios for possible implementations into existing work flows and routines on the ground.
The photographs were taken last Friday at a first-of-its kind workshop on protecting the health workforce in the era of Ebola. The workshop was coordinated by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and United States Agency for International Development at the Center for Total Health in Washington, DC.
The latest information about the Ebola epidemic was presented and inventors and scientists from outside and inside government could collaborate on solutions to improve the situation of health care workers (HCW). Heat exhaustion has been seen as a significant problem in HCW due to the need of elaborate personal protective gear.
USAID is partnering with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United States Department of Defense to launch the Grand Challenge to create solutions to fight Ebola.